Lofty Heights had never planned on having kids, not since her first encounter with a baby cousin had taught her that dolls left out the crying and wriggling and stink. Her mother had told her she'd understand one day, even as Lofty realized she was more interested looking at the cheerleaders than the football team in high school. Meeting Holiday Snap in college had seemed to settle the matter.
Then Holiday’s brother, Snap Shutter, had met Mane Allgood at an ecology conference. Soon after that, they'd started making a name for themselves in their efforts to raise awareness about threatened habitats and species around the planet. Soon after that, they’d come back to Califoalnia to be with family for the later months of the pregnancy. Mane had a little girl, and Lofty’s heart melted shortly thereafter.
Lofty hated admitting her mother was right, but having the parents on hand when diapers needed changing was definitely a point in Scootaloo’s favor.
Yet the happy couple could only resist their wanderlust for so long. By the time Scootaloo was walking, Snap and Mane were already back on the lecture circuit. By the time the little rascal was potty trained, the happy couple were off to the Great Novo Reef. Everyone agreed it was best to keep Scootaloo out of the spotlight, and that meant staying with Lofty and Holiday.
The rest was recent history. Yes, it would be nice if the girl could see her parents more often than birthdays, Yuletide, and some recent video calls, but Lofty and Holiday were there for her every day, and Scoots had never complained about her three moms.
That had led to a very interesting conversation with her third grade teacher, but—
The front door of their cozy little bungalow creaking open brought Lofty’s focus back on the present. She took a moment to see she’d made decent progress on her latest quilt while her attention had been largely elsewhere, then got out of her seat. It wasn’t the door that concerned her. It was how it had been opened. Any time Scootaloo didn’t slam a door open or shut was cause for concern.
She found Scootaloo in the front hall, sneaking up to the little table there with exaggerated care, carrying an envelope in her hand like it was full of nitroglycerin. Even more odd, she was wearing a baseball cap, the purple mass that always seemed in need of a trim poking out from every angle and making the hat bulge.
The worst part was her face. Lofty had almost never seen genuine fear on her niece's face in the girl's whole life, but now Scootaloo looked like she was one bad startle away from wetting herself.
Lofty let Scootaloo take a few more less-than-sneaky steps before saying, “Whatchya got there, slugger?”
The girl jumped like she'd stepped on a tack. “Aunt Lofty!" She pouted. "You know I hate it when you sneak up on me.”
“You didn't seem to mind it the other way around." Lofty leaned against the wall. "Everything okay?”
“Yes! Sure! Great!” Scootaloo nodded frantically, arms behind her back, at least until the cap started to shift. Her eyes darted to it, followed by a steadying hand.
“Really?" Lofty gave a meaningful to that hand, and the dark blue envelope in it. "Because that looks like a note from your vice principal.” It wasn’t the first letter Luna had sent home with Scootaloo. It probably wouldn’t be the last.
“I mean, other than that.” Scootaloo darted forward, shoved the letter into Lofty's grip, and spun on a heel. “So, that’s for you and I’m gonna be at Sweetie’s tonight, okay love you bye!”
Lofty pursued her, but the little rascal was already out the door by the time she started. “Scoots, hold on a second!”
“Can’t talk," Scootaloo answered, already pushing her scooter out of the driveway, "already late!” She'd even crammed that blasted cap under her helmet.
Lofty sighed. “That girl is in so much trouble.” It wasn't the first time Scootaloo had used a sleepover at Sweetie's to delay her punishment, but that was all it would do. Lofty shook her head and ripped open the envelope as she went back inside. “Let’s see what this is about. I may need to go over there myself.”
Canterlot High School
”Charging Into the Future”
To Lofty Heights ,
Your child has exceeded expectations with regards to misbehavior. The sheer magnitude is such that I must speak to you in person for you to properly appreciate it, preferably tomorrow at or around 3:00 PM. If that isn’t possible, please contact me at your earliest convenience.
Please note that failure to arrive or contact me will be taken as evidence that your child has not actually given you this letter, which will result in an additional two weeks of detention in addition to any other punishments that may be administered. They were informed of this when given this letter.
Hoping to see you soon,
Luna Ouranos, Vice Principal
Phone: (650) 555-7669, ext. 686
Email: vpluna@canterloths.edu
Lofty blinked, then reread the letter to make sure she hadn’t misinterpreted anything. “Huh. That girl is in so much trouble.” Previous letters from Luna had detailed the incidents. A few had even included photos that had found their way into scrapbooks. A vague form letter requesting Lofty's presence... This was unknown territory.
She pulled out her phone, only half-aware of doing so. She needed some kind of familiarity in the face of all of this, and she knew where to find it.
After a few rings, the expected voice answered her. “Lofty? What can I do ya for?”
“Is Scootaloo there, Cookie?”
“Oh, sure," said Sweetie Belle's mother. "Just got here.” More muffled, she added, "Scootaloo, yer aunt's callin'!"
Lofty didn't hear whatever excuse her niece shouted back. “Well, she just gave me a letter from the vice principal. Apparently I need to see Luna tomorrow. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
"Well, she did call me earlier. It was..." Cookie trailed off, unfamiliar concern in her voice. "Oh, that's right."
"What is?" Lofty's grip tightened on her phone.
"Oh, just remembered something I'll have to pick up tomorrow! Heh heh. Heh."
Lofty rolled her eyes. Cookie Crumbles was a woman of many capabilities, but she didn't have a deceptive bone in her body. "Uh huh. Any idea why I need to see her face to face?"
The silence stretched on long enough for Lofty to realize she was pacing, stop, and start again. Finally, Cookie said, "Sorry, I couldn't say."
That got a snort of humorless laughter. "Neither could Scootaloo. Practically shoved the letter in my hands and rode away like I was coming after her with a butcher's knife. The girls were planning a meeting at your place tonight, right?" Scootaloo's track record with letting her know ahead of time was spotty enough that it made for a plausible excuse.
"Sure are. Apple Bloom got here with Sweetie."
Lofty let out a breath. "Well, let Scoots know I'm not mad." She told herself she wasn't, which was the next best thing to that being true. "We are going to have to talk about this, but I want her to be able to enjoy herself tonight."
"Of course, Lofty."
"Thanks, Cookie. I'll get out of your hair."
"It's never a bother." It was the most genuine-sounding thing Cookie had said since Lofty had mentioned Luna.
Lofty hung up, took a few deep breaths, and sat back in her quilting chair. She ran her eyes over the pattern, trying to remember what she'd been working on before she'd heard the door. But every time she started piecing her creative process back together, Scootaloo's earlier look of fear came to her mind's eye, and that same process started stitching together all the different ways the girl might have gotten in trouble.
Her imagination was proving far too effective there. Scootaloo didn't have any bruises from a fight, but that just meant she hadn't gotten hit where it would show. No sign of tears... not that Lofty recalled. Either way, Scoots had had the trip from school to recover. Or maybe it was academic, caught cheating or just flunking so bad that the vice principal was thinking about holding her back a grade. Horror of horrors, what if she—
"Lofty? What's wrong?"
Lofty blinked to see a concerned Holiday by her side, a pale orange hand over her white-knuckle grip on the half-finished project. She gladly took her wife's hand in hers. "When do you get home?"
"A few minutes ago. You've been staring at that quilt the whole time. Haven't made a stitch."
Lofty set down her needle and brought her free hand to her temples. "Scootaloo brought home a letter from school. I'm going to need to talk to the vice principal."
Holiday's lips quirked into a smirk. "What did she do this time?"
"No idea," Lofty said with a helpless shrug. "She didn't say anything."
"What? Scootaloo practically brags about the sorts of things that get her in trouble."
"Not this time." Though that didn't keep Lofty from filing the point away and bringing out the really outlandish possibilities in the back of her mind. "The letter didn't gave any specifics either. It's on the credenza if you want to see it for yourself."
Holiday left to do just that, and Lofty's heart sank just a little bit more. A few moments later, she came back, scowling at the letter. "Well then," she said once she was finished, "I'm sure Getaway can handle the shop for an afternoon."
Lofty blinked away another dreadful possibility. "Huh?"
"One of the perks of being the manager, love. I get to approve my own time off." Holiday knelt down and brushed a bit of hair out of Lofty's eyes. "Besides, she's my niece too."
Lofty's answer wasn't so much a hug as clinging to Holiday for dear life. "Thanks, hun."
Dinner, idle chatter, and Webflix kept Lofty's mind from lingering for too long on what Scootaloo might have gotten herself into. But that night, she found herself staring up at the bedroom ceiling for far too long before giving in to her exhaustion, and a familiar voice's pained cries and fearful shouts filled her dreams.
It wasn't the first time Lofty had been in Vice Principal Luna's office. Scootaloo and her friends were only sophomores, but they'd still had their share of misadventures at Canterlot High. But that usually meant being called in along with Cookie and Granny Smith to hear about how the girls had tried zip-lining from the roof or rendered the home ec kitchen unfit for human habitation. Entering the dark office with no Scootaloo in sight felt wrong, especially when Lofty hadn't seen her niece since getting the letter.
At least Luna was sitting. Scoots had mentioned the vice principal's preference for looming over students, and Lofty was in no mood for that kind of petty power play.
“Luna,” Holiday said as they sat, her tone and expression both far calmer than how Lofty felt.
“What did she do this time?” Lofty practically had to shoo away the different dread visions to get a clear view of the woman.
“Holiday, Lofty," Luna said from behind her desk, her expression unreadably neutral. "Always a pleasure, circumstances aside.”
Lofty tried a deep breath. If nothing else, it kept her from trying to leap across that desk to throttle Luna. "Your form letter left me sweating bullets, especially since Scootaloo ran out of the house before she could explain why you gave it to her. I'd really rather skip the pleasantries."
"Fair enough. And my apologies. Those letters are intended for our more... confrontational parents." Luna rolled her eyes. "The ones convinced that their little darlings couldn't possibly be doing anything wrong. After yesterday, I didn't have the time or energy to prepare anything more suitable for the situation."
"And that situation is?"
Holiday reached over to squeeze Lofty's hands. “Relax, dear. It’s not like they hurt anyone.”
Luna opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. She tied clearing her throat, but Lofty knew what she'd seen.
She traded an uneasy glance with Holiday, who had clearly seen it as well. “Did they hurt anyone?” said Holiday.
“That..." Luna drummed her fingers against her desk, every impact hitting Lofty's last nerve. "It depends on your definition of ‘harm.’”
Lofty bolted to her feet. “Spit it out, already!”
Luna just looked at her for a few seconds, utterly unimpressed. “Very well. But to understand the answer that question, you will need some background information. There, I must defer to the experts." She turned to the office door. "Girls?”
Two vaguely familiar girls came into the room. The orange one had red-yellow striped hair, a leather jacket, and a supporting arm around the other. The purple one had an indigo ponytail, mirrored sunglasses despite the dim lighting Luna preferred in her office, and a hand around the first one's waist. Neither seemed comfortable—they were in their vice principal's office, who could blame them?—and they traded an uneasy smile before peeling away from one another and introducing themselves.
"Hello, I'm Twilight Sparkle."
"Sunset Shimmer," added the orange one, one hand reaching up to adjust her headband before Twilight nudged her.
“Here," said Holiday, "aren’t you some of Rainbow Dash’s friends?”
Sunset nodded. “Yes, Mrs. Snap.”
Part of Lofty was glad that the nagging sense of familiarity had been resolved. The rest had more immediate concerns. “I don't care who's giving the answers. I just want some. They can't be worse than anything I'm imagining.”
"You may find yourself rethinking that," said Luna, not helping in the least. She glanced at the girls. "Miss Sparkle?"
Twilight raised a hand. The rough gemstone at her collar glowed heliotrope, and a model moon lander on Luna's desk rose into the air, wrapped in the same light. Luna gave it no more than a passing glance. “Firstly, magic is real.”
Lofty's jaw dropped, looking back and forth between the girl and the model. "I— She— You— What!?"
"Oh, how lovely!" Her gaze whipped to Holiday, who had the same happy grin she wore when Scootaloo was showing off some new way of almost shattering her ankles. "Can you make it spin?"
"Holiday? Hun? You are seeing what I'm seeing, right?"
"Well, if I weren't, I'd be very concerned for at least one of us." Holiday gave the little pout that was the closest she usually came to a frown. "Honestly, Lofty, have you been listening to a word Scootaloo's been telling us about school?"
"I love Scoots with all my heart, but I still remember the 'lake monster' she spent a whole summer obsessing over. You know, the one that turned out to be a tree branch. But this..." Lofty waved a hand, trying to encompass all of the this-ness the floating paperweight represented. "How long has this been going on, Luna? And how does it involve Scootaloo?"
“Rest assured, I am getting to that. Secondly, magic is not used lightly." Another glance. "Miss Shimmer, if you would?”
Sunset stiffened before bringing her hands to her headband. Her fingers rested on the fabric, but she made no further move, eyes darting between Lofty and Holiday.
Twilight put a hand on her shoulder. “I can do it if—“
That got Sunset to shake her head. “No. That’s the whole reason I agreed to this. It’s just… gotten to be a habit.” She shut her eyes, took a deep breath, and moved her hands to behind her head. A tug at whatever knot was back there released the headband.
It also let her ears poke out from under her side bangs. And out. And out. The long, pointed things extended eight inches from either side of her head.
At this, at least, Holiday looked surprised, bringing her hands over her mouth as she gaped at the girl. Lofty tried not to stare herself. Not too much, anyway.
“One way or another," Luna said in that same lecturing tone, "using magic leaves an indelible mark on the human body.”
“It’s harmless," added Twilight, reaching up to her glasses. "Just… startling.”
Sunset gasped. “Twilight, you didn’t have to—”
The other girl whipped off her mirrored glasses before Sunset could say anymore, looking at her with vivid violet-on-green eyes. “I couldn’t let you do it alone.”
Lofty cleared her throat. She hated to break up the cute moment, but she hated the stalling even more. “Okay, I can put two and two together. What happened to Scootaloo? Lasting marks aside, was anyone actually hurt-hurt?”
A quirk of Luna's lips might have been a smile. “Thankfully not. The Canterlot Movie Club was unlucky enough to receive a piece of memorabilia that had been, for lack of a better term,“ and she glared at Twilight Sparkle even as the girl opened her mouth, “cursed. However, our local specialists were able to subdue and pacify them before they did any lasting harm to themselves or anyone else.”
Lofty crossed her arms. “Other than whatever little souvenirs that left.”
“Yes. I called Granny Smith and Sweetie Belle’s parents yesterday. They are each already aware of the situation given Applejack and Rarity's previous involvement. But you…" Luna shrugged. "Well, Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash may be close, but given the sensitive nature of the information, we were limiting it to legal guardians whenever possible."
"Why didn't Cookie tell me?"
"The same reason you had not heard about the school's brushes with the supernatural until now. A potent force keeps it all secure."
Lofty rolled her eyes. “More magic?”
Luna shook her head. “Something that, as a high school administrator, I have found to be far more powerful: Fear of social stigma. No one wants to be the first person to mention magic, and thus appear the craziest before others corroborate." She shrugged. "And who can say whether they would or not?”
“That seems awfully shaky,” Holiday noted.
“It is, and yet it works. For now, at any rate. Besides, this is the sort of conversation that one should only have face-to-face, preferably with visual aids.”
“Windy has been calling Rainbow her ‘little angel’ much more often of late." Holiday shook her head. "But that’s neither here nor there. We’d like to see our niece now.”
Lofty held herself to a single nod. “We’re as prepared as we’re going to get. Like I said, Scoots dropped off the letter and tore out of the house before I could even get a good look at her.”
“I didn’t even see her,” added Holiday.
“Very well." Luna looked to the door again. "Rainbow Dash? Please bring in Scootaloo.”
Rainbow came in without her usual jacket, letting Lofty see the honest-to-goodness feathers fluffing out her shoulders like some old-timey soldier's epaulettes. She also had one arm around a shame-faced Scootaloo, who stared at the floor and still had that hat on.
Rainbow gave Scoots a light punch in the forearm. "You got this, squirt."
After long enough to make Lofty's heart ache, her niece finally looked up at her, eyes watering. "Aunt Holiday. Auntie Lofty." Shaking hands took off the baseball cap, revealing two horns poking out of her head, curving back as they narrowed into points. “I messed up.”
Lofty was by her side in an instant, Holiday along with her. The teenagers scrambled out of their way even as the family came together in a three-person hug. “I’m just glad you’re okay, slugger.”
"I... None of us knew, and it happened so fast, and..." Scootaloo trailed off, giving the occasional muffled sob.
Lofty rubbed her back, relief flooding through her. "It doesn't matter now. What matters is you're safe and no one got hurt."
"I mean, they did—" A meaty smack cut off Rainbow Dash. "Hey!"
"You walked it off," said Sunset Shimmer. "You're fine."
"You see, slugger? Nothing to worry about."
“And it’s not like you’re the only one in the family with a memento like that.”
A chill ran down Lofty's spine. She looked to her wife, who couldn't meet her gaze. “Holiday?”
“Well..." Holiday took a few steps back and blushed. "Snap and I were young and stupid, and the Outback has a lot of soft places if you’re not careful."
There was no unveiling or transition. One moment she was perfectly normal. The next, she had two curling antennae coming out of her forehead. "I’m just glad Mr. Seabreeze got us out quick as he did.” She looked about the room at Rainbow and her friends, a sheepish smile on her face. “I can’t promise it’ll work for you girls, but I can try to show you a few glamours that’ll make blending in a little easier.”
Sunset gave an uneasy grin. “Kind of a lost cause around CHS, but I think we’d all appreciate that for the future.”
Lofty brought a hand to her head as she stumbled back into her chair. “Okay, I think I’ve hit my limit for revelations for a while. Luna, is there anything else we need to know?”
“Nothing at the moment.” After her own survey of the room, Luna reached down to her desk, pulled open a door, and extracted a bottle full of sloshing amber. “Though, and I trust everyone in this room can hold this in confidence, I can offer you a drink if you need one.”
That got an uneasy grin. “Give me a minute to get my head together and I'll see if I still need it.”
Canterlot Park was a great place for Lofty to go when she needed to gather her thoughts. The greenery, people playing with their dogs or kids, the duck pond, it all help her get out of her own head. It put her problems into perspective against the rest of the world. Even the ones that shook that world, like the revelations from a few days earlier, seemed a little easier to handle when she saw everyone else getting on with life.
Holiday had helped too. A little conversation had reassured Lofty that her wife was the same woman she'd fallen for back in college, feelers or no. And that had added another layer of self-assurance on the other reason why she'd come out to the park.
About a minute after her phone beeped at her, she sat on a bench by the pond, next to a nondescript man whose trenchcoat was a bit too bulky for the weather.
“Strange weather we’ve been having,” he said, not looking up from his newspaper.
“Stranger storms are coming,” she answered, watching the ducks paddle about the water.
“That’s what an umbrella’s for. How’s yours looking?”
Lofty smirked. “Not sure if I'll need it."
That got the man to look up from his paper. He pulled a small, blunt plastic cone from one pocket of his coat. A press of a button lit up blue LEDs along the rim, and the sounds of the park faded to a faint murmur. He set the Cone of Silence on the bench between them and gave Lofty a hard look. "Agent, do I need to—"
"You don't need to remind me of anything, sir." She gave him the same unimpressed look she'd refined on Scootaloo's excuses for years. "Do I need to remind you that there are anomaly classes below catastrophic, world-ending Ultraviolet?"
The man drew himself to as much dignity as he could in his Cold War cosplay. "Agent Heights, that is no way to speak to your direct superior."
Lofty held the look. "It is when you're being paranoid, Starfall. We both know this wouldn't be the first time. I laid out everything in the report, risk assessment included."
"Yes. An active time-space discontinuity that has produced numerous Ultraviolet hostiles." Starfall rolled up his newspaper, smacking it into his other hand at "numerous."
"One UV at worst, sir," said Lofty. "A few confirmed Violets, but most were neutralized and the one who wasn't is on the same Infrared-level team as the UV. Those girls have been keeping anomalies contained well enough that all we've had to do is scrub some EweTube videos. Heck, the team was founded by an anomaly."
Starfall shook his head. "You're clearly too close to this to see the situation objectively. Especially now that your own niece has been contaminated."
"Sir, I spent a whole day ready to bring every resource we have down on Canterlot High. Turns out the only thing I had to worry about was Scootaloo getting her shirt caught on her horns." Lofty took a deep breath. Saying it out loud had made it that much more real, and it came as a genuine relief. "It's true, I hadn't been seeing the situation objectively before. But now I am. Speaking from an objective perspective, what do you propose we do? Try to shut down the school and antagonize the empire on the other side of the discontinuity? Punish these girls for doing our job for us with more plausible deniability than most field teams?" Lofty smirked. "Pardon the wordplay, sir, but you're looking a gift horse in the mouth."
"I've seen this kind of thing before," Starfall insisted. "Sure, it's all bright eyes and eager help now, but the price always comes due with self-enforcing anomalies."
Lofty shook her head. "They've already paid it, sir. This one settles its debts quickly."
"So it seems."
She took a look at the haunted, distant look in Starfall's eyes and knew his mind was lost in past missions. Still, the agency only let her get away with so much insubordination. "How long have we been doing this, sir?"
That at least got Starfall to refocus on the present. "The Forensic Research Organization Without Nations has been monitoring abnormal entities for more than a century, as you well know. What are you getting at, Agent Heights?"
"More than a century. A hundred-plus years of resources, experience, insight, all I learned in my training. Yet after knowing her for the better part of twenty years, I only found out about my own wife’s paranormal exposure this week."
"Emotional proximity can—"
“A childhood encounter, no less," Lofty brought back the unimpressed look. "And yet, contradicting everything I learned about paranormal exposure, she’s showed no signs of megalomania, global disruption, not the slightest hint of madness. All in spite of her brother, her niece, or, speaking frankly, her wife.”
Starfall scowled. "FROWN performs a vital service for the planet, agent."
“No argument, sir. I’ve seen what happens if we’re not where and when we need to be. But that makes it that much more important that we don’t waste time and resources where we're not needed. I trust my family, and I trust the girls at Canterlot High. If they’re willing to take on some of the workload, I say we let them.” Lofty spread her arms. "Goodness knows we have bigger problems to worry about."
The scowl stayed, but Starfall's attention drifted back to the pond. Both went silent for an uncomfortable stretch.
Just as Lofty was about to say more, her superior stood up. "The Organization will continue to monitor this."
"And I'm happy to continue to do so." Lofty narrowed her eyes. "With or without supervision."
Starfall reached down and pocketed the Cone. "You're playing a dangerous game, agent."
"I know, sir. It's called trying to live a normal life." Lofty looked around at the bystanders surrounding them. "Whole lot of players. Most don't know the stakes."
After a faint click from the trenchcoat's pocket, the sounds of the park came flooding back. "Let's try to keep it that way."
Lofty nodded. "Still no argument."
Author's Note
The inspiration for this one came from this piece. Cutie Mark Crusader Chimera, yay?
While this isn't a Spy x Family crossover, given the family where everyone has a secret, the title still felt appropriate. Also, several decades of development have greatly refined the Cone of Silence.
